


Enemy of the State

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux, RED (Movies)
Genre: Bookstores, CIA, Crimes & Criminals, FBI, M/M, Paranoia, Snark, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 18:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13507347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: A customer with a conspiracy theory makes Ty's spidey senses tingle. When he decides to check the customer out, he finds way more than he bargained for.Related to myTriplesseries, but not part of it. If you're not familiar with William Cooper, you only need to know he works for the CIA.





	Enemy of the State

No matter the day, or the time of the year, the last ten minutes were always the worst.

They were almost always a race against time—could they flip the sign on the door before a panicking customer graced them with a last-minute visit, looking for something to read on a plane, or searching for an emergency gift?

On most days, the answer was 'yes'.

But not today.

And based on the way he'd rushed through the door, then paused for a moment to catch his breath, this particular customer was going to push them close to the edge.

Ty could just tell.

Or maybe he was being too cruel. Maybe the guy was totally sane, knew exactly what he'd come here to buy, would be done and gone in the space of a minute, leaving them free to lock up on time.

_Yeah, and maybe I have a half-decent chance of winning the next Miss America pageant_.

Ty smiled as the man strode up to the desk. "Evening, sir, how can I help?"

"I'm here to pick up a book you were ordering for me," the man politely explained. "Someone called my house this morning, left a message saying it had just come in."

_Well, well, well. Wonders never cease. I'll need to sit down sometime this week, figure out my swimsuit look and my talent routine._

"What was the name?" Ty asked, leaning over to check out the shelf-full of orders under the desk.

"Battenberg," the customer said. "Same as the cake."

Ty dragged his finger along the row, checking the slender slips of paper stick out of the tops of the books. He didn't recognize the name (and wasn't familiar with the cake), but he hadn't come into the store until noon, so Zane had probably handled the message.

He smiled as he located his prize. He righted himself, wincing as his right hip twinged, placed the book face down on the counter and scanned the barcode on the back cover. On his left, a bill of sale flashed up on the laptop screen.

"That'll be ten fifty-five," Ty said. "How would you like to pay?" Hopefully, not by credit card. The fees would kill them for a transaction this small, and more to the point, he'd already closed the machine out for the day.

Battenberg pulled out a dog-eared wallet, rummaged briefly, then handed over two, equally dog-eared notes.

As Ty opened the drawer to drop in the money and pull out the change, the customer leaned across the desk. In the most normal of voices, he said, "Next time you call, could you not say the name of the book when you leave the message on my machine?"

Ty had no problem with that—Battenberg might have ordered the book as a gift for someone else in the house. "Sure thing, yeah, and sorry if that caused any problems," he said. "Next time, we'll leave a more general message."

Without being asked, the man explained, "The government is tapping my phones, and I don't want them to know what I'm reading."

Ty managed to stifle his groan. So much for his dreams of a beauty queen's crown.

Another day, another book, another goddamn conspiracy nut who didn't have the God-given sense to keep his opinions to himself. It wasn't that he didn't believe in conspiracy theories, he just had plenty of them to deal with already (most of them provided by Nick). He didn't need some random dude sprinkling another flavour of crazy all over his squirrel shit pie.

And it made him wonder—what the hell had the dude even bought?

He reached out to flip the paperback over, slightly dreading what he would find. Had Zane already forgotten Clancy's well-intentioned but angry warning, and ordered _A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching_ again?

The truth was even better than that.

_The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories_ , the garish font on the cover screamed.  _When these Sapphic sisters saddle up, ecstasy is only a hoofbeat away!_

Ty groaned again, this time, out loud. He had nothing against lesbian lit, by why the _fuck_ did it have to be horses? Couldn't any of the Sapphic, saddled-up sisters in question frolic around with a kitten instead?

Not that it was any of his business, of course. If this was what a paying customer wanted to read, who the hell was he to complain? It wasn't as if his own reading tastes ran to anything more sophisticated.

He tapped on the cover and graced the customer with a smile. "Would you like me to put this in a bag for you?"

Battenberg laughed, a brittle and condescending sound. "No, thank you," he curtly said. "I might be paranoid, but I'm not _that_ paranoid."

In the space of a second, Ty's flock of well-fed fucks spread their wings and fluttered away.

He slid the book across the desk. "Okay, then thank you for your business, Mister Battenberg." He glanced around, then leaned forward, his smile falling into a frown. "But if you think the government's tapping your phones, you might not want to come here again."

"Why the hell not?" Battenberg asked, his eyes going wide.

"Because I'm pretty sure the CIA has every floor of this building bugged."

The lesbian literature lover sneered. "Don't be ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous about thinking the CIA have put bugs in our store?" Ty almost-genuinely protested.

"The CIA's not allowed to operate inside the United States," Battenberg snippily explained. "If your store has bugs in it, they would have been put in place by the FBI."

"Not necessarily."

"The fuck are you talking about?" Battenberg asked, throwing his manners to the wind.

Ty adopted his most pompously informative tone. "According to Executive Order 12333, subsequently amended by Executive Order 13470, the FBI is indeed the only federal agency authorized to monitor the activities and movements of United States persons or resident aliens, but the CIA _is_ permitted to act within the territorial borders of the United States to address the specific areas of foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and terrorism."

_Thank you, Code of Conduct Certification Guy._

"So, what you're saying is, the CIA can't and won't monitor people inside the US, _unless_ it thinks they're in cahoots with a foreign terrorist organization."

Ty slapped his hand on the desk. "Exactly."

_"Are_ you in cahoots with a foreign terrorist organization?" Battenberg asked.

"I know this really annoying British dude who used to work for MI6. Does that count?"

"Uh, no, cus the last time I looked, the British government _isn't_ a terrorist organization?"

Ty sneered. "Tell that to my buddy in Boston."

"Why the hell would your buddy in Boston think the British are terrorists?"

_Jesus, bro. Maybe you should put the Sapphic stories down, and open a history book instead?_

"Not really sure," Ty calmly said. "Think it has something to do with how they make their tea."

"I wouldn't know. I don't drink tea."

"Yeah, I'm not really a fan of it, either."

Battenberg leaned forward again. "There are steps you can take, you know."

"What, to deal with the fact I don't like tea?"

"To find out if the government's installed devices in your store."

_Oh, dude, if only you knew how many devices the government's installed in this store. I swear to God, the basement's like a goddamn dragon's treasure._

"Oh, yeah? Like what?" was what he actually said.

"Do you ever hear strange noises when you're on the phone? Static, hissing, popping sounds, unexpected volume changes?"

Ty nodded. "I sometimes hear volume changes, yeah."

_Usually cus I start shouting at someone about what a moron or asshole they are, but that's probably not what you had in mind._

Battenberg was interested, now. "You ever hear anything weird going on in the background when you're hanging up the phone?"

Another nod. "Occasionally, yeah." 

_Mostly the person I just called a moron or asshole telling me to go fuck myself and the horse I rode in on._ _That counts as 'unusual', right?_ Ty mentally shook his head.  _Probably not, cus unusual means rare, and people tell me to go fuck myself on a fairly regular basis._

_And why does it always have to be a horse I ride in on? Why can't I ride in on a tiger instead? Ooh, or maybe a dolphin. Yeah. Fuck me and the dolphin I swam in on. So much better._

Battenberg broke into his thoughts. "What about the walls and the ceilings? Have you noticed any bumps, stains or discoloured patches?"

"Nope."

"What about the power and lights? Have any sockets or switches suddenly stopped working?"

"Now you mention it, yeah, they have." 

_But only cus my idiot husband tried to change out a goddamn switch without turning the power off at the panel, and almost blew us all up in the process._  He shrugged slightly.  _But that was at home, not in the store, so that one probably doesn't count, either._

"You ever found any small holes in your soft furnishings or fabrics?"

"Definitely." 

_Dude, I have cats. I've found small holes in everything, not just the cushion covers. You should see what the little fuckers did to Zane's new pair of shoes._

Battenberg adopted a lecturing air. "Speaking of soft furnishings, did you know a bedroom pillow is now one of the most popular places to hide a listening device?"

"Really?"

"Really."

"To be honest, I'm not concerned about that," Ty said. "I'm pretty sure I'd notice if someone had hidden something inside my pillow."

_When I'm biting into it_ , he almost said.

But enough of this—time to turn the questions around. "So, what have _you_ done that makes you think the government's listening in on your phone?"

Battenberg huffed. "It's complicated."

"Are _you_ in cahoots with agents of a foreign terrorist organization?"

Battenberg coughed and shuffled his feet. "Maybe."

"The fuck do you mean, _maybe?_ Did you have fat fingers dialling an overseas number and accidentally call the switchboard for Boko Haram or Al-Qaeda?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Battenberg snapped. "I'm just not sure if the people I work with in Finland count."

"Has Finland declared war on the United States?"

"No."

"Were any of the nine-eleven dudes Finnish?"

"Of course not."

"Have any Finnish people ever claimed credit for blowing something important up?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then I'm pretty sure your answer is 'no'."

A glower this time instead of a huff. "I suppose so."

Ty jerked his chin at the book. "Maybe the government just doesn't like what you read."

Battenberg wasn't happy with that. "Fuck you, man," he spat as he scooped up the book. "Some of us have sensitive needs. We can't all be as normal and well-adjusted as you." He shoved the paperback into his pocket, stomped to the door, yanked it open and thundered out. The door rebounded and violently clattered shut behind him.

Ty took a long, calming breath.

With his usual, excellent sense of timing, Zane sauntered into the room. "What the fuck was all that about?" he asked, gesturing at the still-shaking door.

"Not sure," Ty honestly said. "But I think I just got insulted. That dude called me normal and well-adjusted."

Zane snorted. "I _would_ ask if he's actually met you, but he was standing right there, so I already know the answer to that."

"You saying I’m not normal or well-adjusted?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, doll, but you're as normal as a duck in a bra."

"That's pretty judgey," Ty complained.

"The fuck are you talking about?"

"Saying a duck in a bra isn't normal. I mean, what if the duck _likes_ wearing a bra? What if the bra makes the duck feel good about itself, gives it the confidence to go to the pond on a Friday night to meet other ducks, instead of staying at home to sit on the eggs?"

In the calmest of voices, Zane said, "Meow Mix, anyone ever told you, you talk a lot of shit?"

"I might talk a lot of shit, but at least I don't slut-shame ducks."

"So, who was Mister Door-Slamming Guy?" Zane asked, sensibly moving the conversation on.

"Just some nut who thinks the government's out to get him."

"Huh."

"Did you know they're apparently hiding listening devices in pillows, now?"

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Guess I should stop biting into them, then."

Ty snickered. "That's what I almost said."

"They do say great minds think alike."

"But also that fools seldom differ."

"We could meet halfway," Zane glibly suggested. "You be the fool, I'll be the great mind."

"It's just as well you're so good-looking, Garrett. Cus if you ever have to rely on your chat-up lines to get laid, you'll be the world's loneliest and least-fuckable man."

"They worked well enough on you."

"It wasn't your chat-up lines that got me. It was how nice your ass looked in a suit."

"But you love me, really. Lousy chat-up lines and all."

"You, maybe, but not your terrible taste in books."

Zane frowned. "What the hell's wrong with my taste in books?"

"You bought four extra copies of that book I just sold," Ty said, pointing to the bill of sale on the screen, which included an inventory count.

"Yeah, so?"

"The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories? Sexy, Sapphic, saddled-up sisters? _Really,_ Zane?"

Zane shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. "We said we were gonna support minority and LGBTQ works. Plus, it's got horses in it. I grew up on a ranch in Texas. It was practically an obligation."

"You don't see me ordering guy-on-guy romance novels just because they take place in a mine."

"Have you _found_ any guy-on-guy romance novels that take place in a mine?"

"That's not the point," Ty protested.

"Pretty sure that's _precisely_ the point."

"Okay, well, if you're allowed to order lesbian fic because it has horses in it, I'm allowed to order a copy of that Tingle book."

That was a threat too far for Zane. "Absolutely not," he said. "Lesbians on horses are fine, but I draw the line at gay, billionaire, T-Rex lawyers."

"What about gay, billionaire, unicorn bikers?"

"No."

"It's the unicorn angle, isn't it? You'd be all over it if was normal horses, but you don't know how to handle the horn."

Zane snickered. "Now _there's_ a complaint I've never had."

"Funny."

The clock on the wall gently chimed.

"Another day, another dollar," Zane murmured as he strolled to the door. He flipped the sign, pulled down the blinds, turned the locks and slid the bolts at the top and the bottom.

"Think we took in more than a dollar," Ty said, waving at the wad of receipts stacked at the side of the drawer. "Not sure we made any money on that last sale, though. Pretty sure the time I spent talking to Mister Conspiracy Guy cost more than the margin we took on the book."

"Unfortunately, we can't put up a sign saying 'No Stupid People Allowed'."

Ty shrugged. "Wouldn't have kept him out, anyway. The guy's paranoid, not stupid."

"It's not paranoia if they _are_ actually out to get you."

"Why the fuck would the government be out to get someone like _him?"_

"I dunno. Why the fuck was the government out to get someone like _us?"_

"Touché." 

A wicked thought wormed into Ty's brain. "We could always check him out, you know. Find out for sure."

"Who, Mister Conspiracy Guy?"

Ty nodded. "On the uh, _special_ computer?"

"You remember what happened the last time you used the special computer?"

"Yeah, yeah," Ty acknowledged, waving away his husband's concerns. "We ended up with a CIA special ops team putting a battering ram through our back door."

"Exactly."

"I was only trying to play online Sudoku. Not sure why the Company got its panties in such a twist about that."

In the driest of tones, Zane said, "Maybe because you ended up playing online Sudoku on a website based out of Moscow that had more viruses in it than a hospital lab?"

"Not my fault the CIA has such shitty anti-virus software."

"Meow Mix, they took out the power to the whole row, hijacked our router and sent a special ops team to kick down our door. I don't know about you, but in _my_ book, that counts as decent anti-virus software."

Ty huffed. "Next you'll be telling me not to use the special computer to download my high-quality porn."

Zane's response was a soul-blasting stare.

"Kidding, I'm kidding," Ty said, holding up his hands. He always downloaded his porn at home. "Jesus, Garrett, what the fuck happened to your sense of humour?"

"I don't know, Ty," Zane retorted. "Maybe I had it knocked out of me when that special ops woman body-slammed me into the floor?"

"We both know you really enjoyed that."

"Did not."

Ty said nothing but raised his brows.

Now it was Zane's turn to give in. "Okay, maybe a _tiny_ bit."

"So, you gonna let me look up the weird guy or not?"

Zane sighed and shook his head, then turned and strode to the rear of the store, muttering quietly as he went.

A few moments later, Ty felt the building vibrate—Zane was using the fridge elevator. He settled himself on one of the stools behind the front desk, then leaned over to pull out the other, preparing it for his husband's return. Vibrations again, a moment of silence, then the patter of large, Texan feet.

Zane reappeared, bearing the aforementioned computer. He set the laptop down on the counter, raised the lid, pressed the button to power it up and slid onto the waiting stool. "Okay, let's see what our beloved government has," he murmured as he logged into Ariadne—one of the Company's classified people analysis systems. "Forename, unknown. Surname, Battenberg. Gender, male. Age Range, forty to fifty, Race, Caucasian. Eye Colour?"

"Blue," Ty provided.

Zane's finger hovered over the Enter key. "Let's do this, then," he said. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen?"

"We could end up being black-bagged and sent to Guantanamo Bay?"

"I thought you wanted to visit Cuba?"

"I do, but I don't wanna go with Rendition Vacations. Their rooms get really shitty reviews."

Grinning, Zane brought his finger down. The hourglass icon began to spin.

And kept spinning.

And spun some more.

Ty's stomach began to churn. "It doesn't usually take this long, does it?"

"It's normally done in five to ten seconds," Zane said, sounding concerned. He shrugged slightly. "But the searches I run usually have more info than this. I'm sure it's fine." 

No sooner had Zane finished speaking than the hourglass disappeared, to be replaced by the message _No Matching Records Found_. 

"See?" Zane said. "Just needed some time to read all the data."

Ty couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed—he'd been hoping for something better than this. "Guess our guy's just a regular joe. The government _isn't_ actually out to get him."

They jumped as the store phone started to ring.

Ty waved it away. "Probably just a customer who doesn't realize we're closed. Happens all the time. Ignore it, they'll eventually go away."

But the caller didn't go away. Alarmingly, the phone kept ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

Huffing loudly, Ty leaned over to answer the call, jabbing the button for speakerphone mode. "Brick and Mortar Books," he announced.

"Grady?" a familiar voice on the other end said.

Ty's innards cartwheeled again. If this guy was calling, their Wednesday night was about to be turned on its head, and probably _not_ in an interesting way. "Hey, Cooper, how's it going?" he said.

The Section Chief and former marine had no time for social graces tonight. "You guys wanna tell me what the fuck you're doing?"

"The hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the record search you just ran through Ariadne."

Next to him, Zane threw up his hands in defeat, slid off the stool and strode away to the back of the store, making it clear the angry Company man was very much Ty's problem to deal with.

"I was just trying to check someone out," Ty defensively said. "We have a user account for the system, and we weren't asking to look at classified data, so what the hell's got you so hot and bothered?"

"Grady, you _do_ remember Ariadne's a real-time monitored data system?"

Ty had completely forgotten that. "Course I do," he smoothly lied.

"Which means all requests are flagged for review as soon as you hit the Enter button? And any request from a user who's Level Five or below has to be counter-approved by someone who's Level Six or above?"

"Yeah, I knew that."

"And you also know you're only a Level Three?"

The opening was too good to resist. "I might only be a three on your scale, Cooper, but on _my_ scale, I go all the way up to eleven."

Cooper blew out a weary sigh. "You're lucky it was me on the desk tonight, Grady. It was supposed to be Ibanez instead. If she'd seen your name come up on the board, she wouldn't even have bothered to call. She'd have sent out a team to kick down your door and waterboard you in your customer toilets."

"Eh, whatever," Ty dismissively said. "You guys tried that tactic already. Didn't even make us blink. Pretty sure Zane actually enjoyed it."

"I would ask if Garrett's a sucker for punishment, but then I remember he's married to you."

"You're funny."

"Somebody here has to be, Grady, and it sure as shit won't ever be you."

That was an insult too far for Ty—he didn't own a 'Relax, I'm Hilarious' t-shirt for nothing. "You know, Cooper, I'm pretty sure raging assholes like you are the reason I was born with two middle fingers."

"And I'm pretty sure drooling morons like you are the reason I need anger management training," Cooper shot back, giving just as good as he got.

Ty bit his lip, trying not to giggle and give the game away. Cooper was always good for a fight, the meaner and more outrageous, the better.

"If you're done bitching at me for now, how about you get back on point, and tell me what the hell you were doing?" the Section Chief asked, sounding as if he was grinning himself.

"I was checking out one of our customers."

"You mean a book-buying customer?"

"That's the kind you usually get in a bookstore, yeah."

"Watch the sass, Grady," Cooper warned. "You're still only a phone call away from having a SWAT team drop through your roof."

"Yeah, yeah." As he spoke, Ty took a moment to scan the store, looking for sniper rifle lasers.

""At least tell me you had a really good reason to run the search, and you weren't just checking somebody out cus they pissed you off and you're looking for dirt."

"C'mon, man, would I _ever_ do something as stupid as that?"

"You mean the guy who tried to use a classified, government computer to play online Sudoku on a malware-ridden, Russian server? With his Company credit card? The card he's only supposed to use in life-or-death situations?"

Ty felt his cheeks go red. "You know what I did?"

"Grady, I hate to tell you, but everyone and their _dog_ at Langley knows what you did. We've added the incident to the Corporate Security training course as an example of what _never_ to do."

"The pop-up ads were really annoying. And I'd left my own credit card at home."

"And it was a life-or-death situation, right?"

"The wi-fi doesn't work in the basement, and the laptop has a regular network connection," Ty explained. "I was _bored,_ Cooper. And you wouldn't like me when I'm bored. Bad things tend to happen."

"Okay, but could you at least stay away from Russian servers?" Cooper almost pleaded. "Maybe limit yourself to looking at photos of hot men and cats? Or hot men and guns, if that's any better?"

"Ooh, that reminds me, I'm gonna send you a video I took on my phone this morning. Cricket was sleeping, farted so loudly she woke herself up and rolled off her seat. Was fucking hysterical."

"Gee, I can't wait."

"Aren't you glad I ran that search through Ariadne now?"

"Yeah, except you still haven't explained why you actually ran it."

"The guy told me he thought the government was tapping his phones," Ty explained. As he talked, he slid the cash drawer out of the till. "I figured it wouldn't do any harm to run him through the Company system, see if there's anything to his claims, or if he's just a kook in a tinfoil hat."

Cooper sighed again. "Grady?"

"Yeah?"

"You _do_ remember the CIA _isn't_ a law enforcement agency, and has no authority to conduct surveillance on US soil?"

"Course I do."

"Which means if your customer guy was _actually_ under observation, it would fall under the Bureau's purview, not ours?"

"What about those Executive Orders?"

"Those would only apply if your customer's involved with a foreign terrorist organization. And given what kind of books you sell, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that's _extremely_ unlikely."

"Anyone ever tell you sarcasm's the _least_ intelligent form of humour?"

"Really? I always thought it was fart jokes and puns."

"There's nothing wrong with a quality pun," Ty protested, springing to his absent husband's defence.

"You've been living with Garrett for too long, Grady. He's rubbing off on you in all the wrong ways."

"Didn't realize there's anything _but_ a wrong way to rub off on someone. Maybe it's different when it's a woman doing it." Ty could almost hear Cooper rolling his eyes. "And for the record, I'll have you know it's _entirely_ possible our customer guy's involved with a terrorist organization."

"You say that like it's a point of pride."

"Just because we lead normal lives doesn't mean we only sell books to normal people."

"Fair enough," Cooper acknowledged. "They _do_ say it's always the quiet ones you should watch."

"Exactly."

"So why do you think your customer guy's involved with a terrorist group? What did he say or do that made your spidey senses tingle?"

"I asked him straight up if he was working with a foreign terrorist organization."

"And?"

"And he told me he wasn’t sure if the people he knows in Finland count."

Silence at the other end.

"Hey, Coop, you still there?" Ty nervously asked.

In the grimmest of voices, the Section Chief asked, "Grady, did you say _Finland?"_

"Finland, yeah," Ty confirmed. "The skinny place between Russia and Sweden. I told the guy he probably shouldn’t worry too much, since it's not exactly an Al-Qaeda recruiting ground."

"This customer, by any chance, was he buying some kind of erotic fiction?"

The hairs on the back of Ty's neck stood up. "LGBT romance, yeah."

Zane sauntered into the room, carrying the cash deposit bag and the metal lid for the drawer. Ty beckoned him back to the desk, urging him to sit in on the call.

"I just sent you a photo," Cooper said. "Take a look, let me know if it's the same guy."

On the computer, the email notification binged. Zane reached out to stab at some keys—the photo popped up on the screen.

Ty peered at the man the image portrayed. He was younger and thinner, with frameless glasses and shorter hair, but the features were exactly the same. "Yeah, that's him," he confidently declared. "That's the guy who was just in our store."

"When did he leave?" Cooper asked next.

"Five, maybe ten minutes ago?"

"Then he can't have gone far." The line went dead as Cooper placed the phone call on mute. He was back twenty seconds later. "Sorry about that, had to get some people moving."

"Don't suppose you want to tell us what all this is about?" Zane asked.

"Hey, Garrett, how's it going? And no, not really."

Ty snorted. "Lemme guess, it's need to know, and right now, the two of us don't need to know."

"Something like that," Cooper said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "But you mentioned the guy bought some erotic fiction, right?"

"A collection of short stories, yeah."

"What was it called?"

"You don't want to know," Zane warned. "Seriously, man."

"Garrett, I spent eight years in the marines, and now I work for the CIA. If you're worried about me being shocked, you're barking up the wrong goddamn tree."

"The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories," Ty bluntly proclaimed.

They heard someone in the room behind Cooper laugh, then quickly turn it into a cough. Cooper himself groaned and puffed out another sigh.

Grinning, Zane said, "Long day, Coop?"

"Don't even ask."

"You sure you don't want to tell us what's going on? A problem shared is a problem halved."

A quiet snort, then Cooper said, "You're cleared for the file, so fuck it, yeah, why the hell not?"

"We're all ears."

"Your customer's a guy the Bureau and us have been trying to find for the last four months. We think he's laundering money for one of the smaller terrorist groups, and we're pretty sure he's moving some of it through accounts in Helsinki."

"Helsinki being the capital of Finland."

"Exactly."

"So, the guy was right," Ty said. "He's not paranoid. The government _is_ actually out to get him."

"He launders money for terrorists, Grady," Cooper drily pointed out. "Of _course_ the government's out to get him."

"Not gonna argue with that."

They heard Cooper typing on keys, looking for something on his computer. "The name you used in the search, that was the guy?" he asked.

"Battenberg, yeah."

"Same as the cake."

"That's what he said as well. Never heard of it myself."

"That's cus it's British," Cooper explained. "Similar to checkerboard cake, except the quarters are pink and yellow instead of chocolate and vanilla, with strawberry jam between the quarters and a layer of marzipan round the outside."

Zane wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Marzipan, ugh."

"Yeah, I usually peel the marzipan off. Especially when it's that mass-produced, uranium-yellow crap."

Ty snickered and shook his head. "Cooper, for someone who works for the CIA, you know _way_ too much about cake."

"Says the man who can name all fifty flavours of Cheetos."

"I'm still trying to get my hands on a bag of the strawberry ones they sell in Japan."

"A buddy of mine who's still in the Corps just got posted to Okinawa," Cooper told them. "He might be able to hook you up."

"Appreciate that, thanks."

"So, our money launderer guy," Zane announced, putting the phone call back on track. "We also wrote down a phone number for him. I'm guessing you want to know that as well?"

Cooper cleared his throat. "Sorry, yeah. Can you read it to me?"

The slip from the book was still on the desk. Zane pulled it towards him, flipped it over, squinted, brought it closer, held it slightly further away and read, "Four-one-zero, five-five-five, six-eight-two-six."

"Doubt it'll show up in any records, but we'll give it a call, see if we can keep whoever answers on the line long enough to trace their location."

A tiny flash of red-gold flame flickered in Ty's peripheral vision. He glanced at the window, and there was the would-be banker himself, his paperback book still jammed in his pocket, carrying a six-pack of beer in one hand, lighting a cigarette with the other. His mission achieved, Battenberg casually sauntered away.

Ty blinked a few times, not quite sure of what he'd just seen.

He was halfway to sharing the news with Cooper, then he had a much better idea. "Hey, Coop, what do you think the Company'll do for the person who brings the guy in?"

Cooper snorted. "Not much. Probably just a pat on the back and a glowing note in their personal file. I'd be asking for an all-expenses-paid trip to Tahiti, myself."

Tahiti, hmm. Ty liked the sound of that.

"Okay, well, good luck with the search for your guy. Zane and I need to close up the store, so if you don't mind, we gotta go."

"Sure, no problem," Cooper said. "You've been a huge help. Honestly. Even if we don't manage to track the guy down tonight, at least we know what city he's in."

"Put in a good word with management for us, yeah?"

"Grady, if this pans out, by the time I'm done talking, the suits up on the seventh floor won't even know what Sudoku is."

With that, the line went dead.

Ty turned to his spouse, who was locking the lid onto the drawer. "Put your jacket on, Lone Star, cus we're going on a hunt."

"Oh, yeah? What kind of hunt?"

"A _cake_ hunt," Ty replied. Seeing his husband's confusion, he added, "Battenberg didn't go home, babe. He just went into the place next door to get himself some beer and some smokes. I saw him go by again a minute ago. He's walking down our goddamn street."

"And lemme guess. You want us to round him up and take him down?"

"Course I fucking do. It's been _ages_ since I pounded anyone into the ground." Anyone other than Zane, that was, and even then, in an entirely different way. "C'mon, babe. Why should the feebs and the CIA special ops guys get all the glory and fun?" 

He waited for his sensible husband to politely shoot his suggestion down.

To his relief, Zane's response was a wicked grin. "Why don't you follow the target on foot?" he said, waving Ty towards the front door. "I'll lock up, set the alarm, head out the back, come round the other way on the bike?"


End file.
